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Miss Amanda Brend
(email at amanda.brend@durham.ac.uk)
Research Topic
From Aerial Photograph to Social Practice: the Iron Age Communities of Southeast Scotland, c800-c AD 300.
Abstract
The role of aerial photography in site discovery in archaeology is long established. Changing theoretical approaches in archaeology during the past 20 years, however, have involved a critique of aerial archaeology that has reduced its power as a narrative tool. This has resulted in its marginalisation in recent accounts of the past.
This research uses the vast aerial photographic record to explore the Iron Age landscapes of southeast Scotland, where the cropmarks represent some of the most spectacular in the lowlands. I focus on Lothian and Fife regions, where cropmarks form the core material for the later prehistoric period. This research places the aerial material at the very heart of the study, demonstrating that cropmarks can be used to explore themes central to Iron Age communities across much of Britain: the phenomenon of enclosure, social space and order, and aspects of monumentality and identity.
Information from recent excavations on cropmark sites is used to ‘ground’ the aerial material. As well as providing an absolute chronological framework, excavations help to develop a three-dimensional understanding of, and approach to, cropmark sites. I am also constructing a fresh classificatory scheme for the area and investigating how people moved around these sites and the kinds of social practices and materials involved in site construction and inhabitation. I am developing case studies within the area to examine different scales of analysis, from wider landscape to household.